Cookie has COOTIES!!!! ok… Lice… or Mites….

I know it’s been awhile since I’ve blogged… time seems to skip a few beats when spring is arriving and so much needs done on the farm. One of those things gave me the idea for this blog… Cookie has COOTIES!!!! Actually, she has small bald dots on her face. I noticed it one day about a week ago and thought she was rubbing her cheek on the fence… she does that when she’s shedding really bad and it itches her. Then I noticed some bare patches behind her ear, though I thought still it could be scratching. Yesterday was when I began to suspect bugs… not because I saw bugs or saw eggs… but because she developed small bald dots where bald dots would be hard to get from scratching on a fence…. between her ribs! So, off to the feed store I went in search of Ivomec Eprinex pour on. Yes… we do carry it on the site, but we were waiting on stock to arrive and my girl had BUGS!!! So, I go to Olsen’s and they are out too!!! I know D.E. is the organic way to go… and I have a fifty pound bag… and I get that if applied every day for ten days that it should take care of the little critters… but COOKIE HAD BUGS!!!! (I’m not a big fan of eight legged critters that suck on blood) Needless to say, the lady at the store offers me Ivomec injection which I quickly point out to her explicitly states NOT TO USE ON DAIRY COWS! So I dug through the shelf until I found a powder that was safe for dairy cows and had zero milk withdrawal… main ingredient is D.E.! LOL (D.E. is diatomaceous earth which is a long way of saying ground up coral which is so fine it injures the bugs when ingested.) So, Cookie has been dusted and will be treated with the Ivomec Eprinex when it comes in next week. I’ll take new pictures once I figure out that the bugs are gone and the hair is growing back. Here’s to a less buggy spring!!! Keep your fingers crossed that the bugs are doomed!!

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2 thoughts on “Cookie has COOTIES!!!! ok… Lice… or Mites….”

Jerri, if you dust the backs of the cows with garden sulfur powder(available in large bags at most feed stores for really cheap), your darlings get serious relief from the mites. We avoid most chemicals, especially Ivomec wormer (or is it Ivermectin, which may be the same thing under a different brand name?). I have heard that it ruins the soil where the dung falls; kills the dung beetles along with other beneficial insects. Since the Esprinex’s foundation is D.E. it might be ok, but I’d bet it’s a far sight spendier than garden sulfur!